but catcher in the rye is really shit.. surely everyone knows that?
the digested read version of catcher really nailed it..
it's overrated, but it's not shit... once i read some of Salinger's letters it was funny how close HE was Holden in his attitudes and opinions, and of course both were raised as priviledged manhattanites...
i reread it for the first time in 10-15 years and was suprised how much more i enjoyed it... i think being removed from his age group made me like it more... it's a nice , funny, read, that has moments of deeper meanings, but really and truly it is not a great work of art, it's too sophomoric... ie. it's not DUMB, but nor is it truly clever... i read it b/c i had read Hunger by Knut Hamsen and was blown away by how much it reminded me exactly of Catcher, yet written 60 years before...
all in all, his short stories are probably his best things... somehow way more whimsical AND more serious than Catcher...
Farnny and Zooey is nice, it's like a 60's french film as a book, maybe Contempt by Goddard?, in the sense that not a lot happens, but somehow there is something going on under the surface... i liked it, a quiet desperation sort of book and nice to see him deal with female charectors...
never finished Raise high the roof or whatever that later Buddist stuff was called... a lil drab and dull...
all in all, a good writer, but not a great one.. yes, as the Digested thing points out snarkily, most of Salinger's charectors are poor little rich kids, but aren't you supposed to write about what you know? he'd be more of a jerkoff for pretending he understood the inner lives of an alabama truckdriver or a west side stevedore...